Pepsi to Corner Douchebag Market

This week Pepsi introduced an iPhone application called "Amp Up Before You Score" to promote its competitor to the slew of energy drinks. Its purpose? To give you alleged insider information to boost you powers of seduction, as well as give you a platform to brag about which women you managed to get naked.

There are so many things wrong with this you really need a flowchart to diagram them all, but perhaps the most egregious would be that one of the "types" of women is married. With that in mind, perhaps this app should be called the "Pepsi Adultery Helper" or maybe the "Pepsi Commandment Breaker." Really Pepsi, has it come to this?

This just seems so completely stupid on so many levels, including the fact that they have just completely alienated 50% of their potential market. Who exactly is this drink aimed at? If the app is aimed at their target market, we can assume that...

• It can't be single women...
• It's certainly not kids, because you have to be 17 or older to download the app, and mom sure as heck isn't ever going to buy this stuff now.
• It's not married guys or those in a relationship, because they're already getting some.
• It's not guys with social skills, as they wouldn't need the "help" this app offers.

With those groups removed, I think we've determined both the target market for this beverage, and a potential tag line: Pepsi Amp: The Drink of Lonely, Inept Guys

US Oopsie Cup

The Major League Soccer sides played their first games in this year's US Open Cup this week, and half of them got knocked off by lower-level opponents. One of the most unlikely was the New England Revolution being beaten by the USL-2 Harrisburg City Islanders.

In a burst of insanity (or apathy) New England coach Steve Nicol made all three of his allowed subs at halftime. This came back to burn him big time as Kheli Dube went down with an ankle injury with almost a half hour left in the game. Twenty minutes later the Revs suffered another injury, forcing them to play the rest of regulation and all of extra time with just nine players.

You've got to feel for the Revs, but what the heck was he thinking leaving himself with no subs?

Why Would I Want These Tacos?

I fail to grasp the logic behind this taco ad from Jack In the Box:





How exactly is this supposed to motivate me to buy these tacos? Do I want to emulate someone who is so stupid he can't read or do basic math? If he's that stupid (or that stoned) why would I trust his culinary judgment? For that matter how was he able to drive that van with so few brain cells? Mysteries abound.

An Easter Thought

A few years ago, my wife and I saw one of these candy dispensers being advertised on a home shopping channel. One the hucksters said "...and this makes a perfect Easter gift."



That's right, because nothing says "Hallelujah the Lord has risen" like a pooping moose...

We're Number 114!

If you thought the proliferation of pointless post-season competitions was limited to college football bowl games, you're wrong. Fresh on the heels of the prestigious College Basketball Invitational whose storied history reaches back to.... umm... last year... comes the CollegeInsider.com Tournament.

Both the CBI and CIT tournaments include 16 teams which did not get selected for the NCAA or Nobody's Interested Tournament National Invitational Tournament. If you rank these tournaments by longevity, this means that the participants in the CIT tournament are competing to be crowned the 114th best team in the country. Do we really need more than a third of the Division One men's teams competing in a tournament? Are athletic departments really this desperate for cash?

Pizza Hut - Aiming High

I recently received a Pizza Hut flyer with the following headline:

I must say I'm glad that Pizza Hut is finally serving "restaurant quality" food after all these years of troweling out "gas station" and "pirate ship quality" fare. Since Pizza Hut is a restaurant, wouldn't any food they serve be "restaurant quality?" Perhaps this is a question best left for students of food metaphysics...

GooooooooooaaaalrightEnoughAlready

I've been thinking seriously about switching from playing the Pro Evolution Soccer series and giving the long-running FIFA franchise a try. There's a number of things that bug me about PES 2008 -- including the increased grass friction that makes long ground passes difficult and the continued lack of an MLS license.

My biggest gripe is that somewhere between Winning Eleven 9 and PES 2008 the developers changed the shooting controls. In all the previous incarnations of the game you pushed right or left to aim for the right or left side of the goal. Now you push up or down. I spent many, many hours swearing at this game until I figured out what they had done. Why the hell did they do this? Someone at Konami has a smack upside the head coming to them.

I'm willing to give FIFA 09 a try, but one thing is holding me back. It has quite possibly the worst ad in the history of video games.





Why on earth would I want to listen to sixty seconds of someone half-heartedly yelling goal? Lord almighty is that annoying.

Oooh That Smell...

Hello again. I just got back from Las Vegas, so I'll be posting a bunch of non-soccer stuff over the next couple of days. One of the oddest experiences I had in Vegas was the horrible odor that assaulted my nose as the Beautiful and Talented Wife and I walked into the Venetian Hotel and Casino.

Immediately upon entering, both of us looked at each other and said "Do you smell that?" After a few steps I realized what it reminded me of. The entire casino smelled like a urinal cake... an overwhelming horrifying urinal cake. It was so bad that we left almost immediately... never to return. We walked past the Venetian another day, and the funk was so bad we could smell it on the sidewalk -- which is roughly 50 yards from the entrance -- over the buses and billions of taxis on Las Vegas Boulevard.

As we continued our tour of casinos on the strip, the Palazzo and the Monte Carlo also smelled like this. I'm not sure if they're all using the same odd-smelling carpet cleaner, but I'm sure these high-end places aren't hoping "men's room" is the lasting impression you have of their property. Ick.

Stupid Sports Injuries

For those of you who might have missed it, Real Salt Lake's Fabian Espindola managed to injure himself so badly last week that he had to be subbed out of the game and will miss the next 4-6 weeks with a severely sprained ankle. What happened? He did a backflip to celebrate a goal... that was disallowed for offsides.

This made me think of other odd sports injuries. Football fans may remember Redskins quarterback Gus Frerotte knocking himself out of a game when he head-butted a wall celebrating a touchdown, or kicker Bill Gramatica who tore up his knee celebrating a more-or-less meaningless field goal.

Baseball is replete with weird injuries - but most of those seem to happen off the field. The Brewers' Matt Wise sliced his hand open on a pair of salad tongs a year or two ago. One of my favorites was that of Royals outfielder Mark Quinn, a former member of my fantasy baseball team who injured himself because he tripped over a table while "playing kung fu" with his brother.

I've Got Mad Hits Like I Was Rod Carew

I just finished watching Chivas USA lose 2-0 to Tauro FC of Panama. My question is... what the heck was up with the turf at Estadio Rod Carew?

I've heard of crop circles before, but crop squares? Was the groundskeeper going for the Boston Garden look? With the gradation from dark to light borders it's like an Escher woodcut... except without the fish.

On another note, boy is it painful to see Chicago Fire icon Zach Thornton lumbering around out there. He still holds the career records for wins and saves for my beloved Fire. At his prime he was a brick wall in front of the goal. Now he looks and moves like a brick wall. Ugh.